Creative Coming Together

So this image is something of a summary of the week for me. Tuesday and Wednesday morning I was out on the sand taking pictures. Wednesday afternoon I went to hear a talk at the National Gallery given by the author Michel Faber for the Scottish Society For The History of Photography about the photographic work done by his wife Eva. She died of multiple myeloma in July 2014. Michel is published by Canongate and L has worked on some of his books including his book of poems, Undying : A Love Story, written about Eva after her death and published last year. Which resonated strongly for me as my father wrote a series of poems after my mum died of cancer in 2015. Part of his way of coping, just has blipping was part of mine. Eva explored a variety of creative avenues, of which conventional photography was just one. Following her diagnosis she set about a number of artistically focused projects in the time she had left. The penultimate one was called My PETs combining some of the medical PET/CT scans of her body with her own photographs and paintings. Some of the photographs taken from the window of their flat in Tollcross. More links to my own life's tapestry. Tollcross Labour Party was where I met L and on the route between our two flats when we first started going out. Michel discussed the My PETs series in his lecture and wrote about it in the SSHoP Studies in Photography magazine. He also talked about Eva's final photography project which used a number of the small jointed artist mannequin figures, arranged in the landscape. Figures that Michel set up on her instructions before Eva got out of her wheelchair to take the pictures. Unfortunately I didn't take notes in the lecture and have forgotten the name of the project, and there seems no reference to it online. At least not yet. I have a box of the same sort of mannequins that I got last year after they had been used in a Festival installation at the Scottish Parliament. I was talking about Michel's talk with J yesterday and the idea of taking a mannequin picture down on the beach, inspired by Eva's work, came up. And so here it is. My tribute to the work of Eva Faber.
 
And an extra - L's birthday but she had band practice in the morning and then some work to finish off so she didn't get to open her cards and presents until well into the afternoon.